We’ve finished our five nights at Camping Fuentes Blancas in Burgos and it’s time to move on. We opted for five nights just to be able to relax after the journey to Spain but, in truth, four would probably have been sufficient.
Slightly unusually for early-ish morning, the motor vehicle service point was free so I availed myself of its facilities. One of the problems with the modern prevalence of motor homes can be the single threading of multiple “customers” through a single service point. Frodo, in particular, can take some time to dump the waste water, the outlet being a little restricted.
Francine had spotted a potentially interesting town, Lerma, on one possible route to Salamanca, our next main stop. Our Burgos map refers to Lerma as “uno de los pueblos más bonitos de España”. Since we’re here and may well not be again, we thought we should have a squint. Sally Satnav was set accordingly.
‘T was only about 30 minutes distant. We parked in a hotel car park which was apparently used by motor homes, had a coffee to assuage any guilt (no little treats with this one) then tramped up to Lerma. I think it’s fair to say that we were both underwhelmed. If this is one of the más bonitos de España then I’m high-tailing it back to la belle France. This is the main square.
We left a slightly disappointing Lerma and tacked cross-country to the autovia down to Salamanca. A swift word on Spanish motorways: autovias are free whereas autopistas are toll roads. After an interesting cross-country route, we cruised along a reasonably boring autovia and eventually arrived at Camping Don Quijote which Francine had booked ahead. They were clearly very busy so booking was a good move. We checked in and were directed to a pitch.
A Dutch camper van (this is a bloody ACSI site) was in the process of setting up in the pitch we’d been directed to. Francine had a quick discussion with the Dutch and returned to the bureau. Crossed wires! We were redirected to an alternative pitch which required very careful manoeuvring to get into, the pitch being small and guarded by tree trunks at both corners with the approach lane being narrow and made more narrow by impeding electric boxes. I shuffled Frodo in mercifully unharmed.
These have to be the smallest camping pitches I’ve ever been on. It was not unexpected – the blurb says they are 70m2 but the reality is still a bit of a shock. Frodo is 6.8m long but there’s a 2-bicycle bike rack on the back which I reckon makes his overall length about 7.5m. I reversed him so that his bike rack was just touching the rear hedge (the pitches are, at least, hedged) and his nose just reached to the front of the pitch. I paced it out and the width is about the same; we’re talking 8m x 8m max. – 64m2 on a good day. 70m2 seems a little optimistic. Nonetheless, the sun is out and we’re here.
Francine had again chosen a campsite beside a river, there having been one at Burgos. Though we had seen a few dragonflies zooming about at Burgos, the river looked devoid of dragonfly life, as did a wetland that we tried to investigate. Once settled and refreshed in the time-honoured fashion, we went to check out this river, the Tormes. Same story: warm, bags of sun, reeds but no dragonflies. It is a big river, mind.
I’ll stop lugging my camera about.
Evening was much more interesting. We’d bought a pack of rabbit, ready cut up, from Mercadona in Burgos. Now that we had weather conducive to cooking al fresco, we got the induction hob set up under Frodo’s sun canopy and cooked Conejo Paella con Alcachofas, to the envy of some of our Dutch neighbours.
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